But how? Theater practices in most theaters today would shed little light. The conditions are just too different. Elizabethan professional theater conditions are, however, closely approximated today in one setting. Each year from January through March the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, puts on a “Renaissance Season.” As in all ASC seasons, plays in the Renaissance Season are performed by experienced, professional actors who are very familiar with Elizabethan language, customs, texts and plays. In addition, the actors know each other well, as an Elizabethan acting company’s actors did, because the ensemble is fairly stable over the seasons and years. The actors perform on a replica Elizabethan stage, the Blackfriars Theater, surrounded on three sides by audience members, and even “gallants” on the stage itself. And in each season the company puts on a rotating series of different plays, usually five of them, so the actors perform a different play each night.
In the Renaissance Season, Elizabethan conditions are approximated even more closely. As in Elizabethan times, the actors figure out how to put on the plays by themselves; they have no director. And they put the plays on at a very rapid clip. In less than three full months they mount five plays, each introduced in turn and entering the rotation, all five in the rotation by about the middle of the season. New plays are rehearsed in the day, as the prior plays are performed at night. This pace roughly equals the pace at which the Lord Admiral’s Company introduced plays, as we can tell from Henslowe’s Diary. Lastly, the plays at the end of the sequence are ones with which the actors are not already familiar. They start with Shakespeare plays, which of course they already know and in which they almost all have performed before. But then they turn to Elizabethan period plays with which they are not already familiar. In those cases they are in much the same position as an Elizabethan acting company with a new script, just delivered by the playwright.
There are some differences of course, but I don’t think that those are consequential. The play’s author probably was available to the Elizabethan acting company, as he obviously is not here. Stern cites references which seem to say that writers of plays might tutor actors regarding their performances. None of those references shows, however, that professional playwrights instructed professional actors regarding how to perform their roles. Certainly, playwrights wrote the words which actors “parroted,” in the condescending term used by some of the writers Stern cites. But whether those writers cared to admit it or not, good acting requires formidable skills by the actors themselves. Most playwrights probably did not possess those skills. There are many surviving complaints by playwrights, moreover, that professional acting companies have made a hash of their plays, complaints which suggest that the playwrights did not help the actors prepare for performance. My own limited experience in play writing, and what I have heard from real playwrights, suggests that actors want to know from the authors only their characters’ backgrounds and motivations. They aren’t much interested in the author’s opinions about how to act the roles. An Elizabethan author could mend the play if the actors wanted, as he cannot here, but the ASC actors can and do make many minor cuts on their own when they believe that the material doesn’t advance the purpose.
It’s also possible that audiences today expect more polished first performances than did Elizabethan audiences. I doubt the existence of any such difference, however. Many records show that first performances of new plays were a big deal in Elizabethan theaters. Both for the actors and for the audiences. Good evidence tells us that acting companies charged twice the normal basic admissions price at first performances of new plays. Henslowe recorded for several years his daily receipts from additional fees to enter the galleries of his Rose theater. His receipts are almost invariably higher for first performances of new plays. Thus, the evidence seems to say, more people attended, and were willing to pay extra as well, on those occasions. Presumably, they expected to see polished performances.
I attended the rehearsals for the third play of the 2016 Renaissance Season, Middleton’s Women Beware Women. Women is a sophisticated and complex, rather extravagantly decadent, Jacobean play. But it is a play with which the actors had almost no prior familiarity. They would have to figure it out, and under difficult conditions. They had eight days in which to prepare for the opening night performance on January 28. On most of those days they were also performing either Tempest or Measure for Measure. Those conditions to a large extent determined how the actors approached their problem. As Elizabethan acting companies were responding to the same practical necessities, the actors’ responses here should give us considerable insight into how the Elizabethan companies might have responded.
The documents Stern examines show that Elizabethan actors studied their individual parts by themselves, on their own time. So did the actors at the ASC. Their parts had been assigned, and a doubling chart prepared. They arrived at the initial read-through at various stages of preparation. Some already knew their lines fairly well, and had thought out their vocal inflections. Others went through that process as preparation for the performance progressed. But memorization and vocal inflection were almost entirely the actors’ own individual responsibilities. Very little ensemble time was spent on the process, and then only if the other actors thought a different inflection might represent a better reading.
The actors first assembled as a group to work on the play at the initial read-through. This was the last time they took on the whole play in sequence until the “stumble-through” more than a week later. At the read-through the actors read the play, each reading his or her part(s). They paused briefly to note and discuss potential staging problems. After the read-through they held an initial conference that included the stage, costume and properties managers. They discussed staging problems more thoroughly, properties, costumes, pre-show music, songs called for by the play, possible cuts, and optimal allocation of the available rehearsal time. No similar read-throughs and conferences are reflected in Elizabethan documents, but practical considerations suggest that they occurred. The read-through, unlike the author’s reading to the company, allowed the actors themselves to think in practical terms about staging the play. Conferences were necessary for the same reasons they were necessary here.